Tag Archives: german cuisine

Warm potato salad

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Here’s a recipe courtesy of Chef Erwin Pirolt, one of my cooking school instructors.  This is a close second to German potato salad, but has no bacon.  It has great flavor and I make it all the time, so trust me when I tell you you have to give it a try.  Be sure to get some high-quality beef base for this – not the cheap stuff that’s all MSG.  If you have rich beef stock, this would be a good time to dip into your supply.
 
Warm Potato Salad (variation of German recipe)
5 lbs new potatoes (do not use floury potatoes!)
2 onions, finely chopped
4 or 5 T Dijon mustard
2 or 3 T Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 c salad oil
1/2 c cider vinegar diluted in 1/2 c water
1/2 beef bouillon cube diluted in 1 c water
4 to 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Fresh chives, finely chopped
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste

1) Boil potatoes in their jackets, peel and slice while piping hot 
2) Add onion, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt & pepper (do not toss until indicated)
3) Pour oil over top
4) Pour diluted vinegar over top
5) Pour bouillon over top (do not use all if it would make salad too watery; use more if too dry – use own judgement here)
6) Add garlic and gently toss
7) Top with plenty of chopped chives

NOTES: Salad is especially good when it sits awhile

Eisbein

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A panorama of Eisbein

Being no stranger to all edible parts of an animal and coming from German farm stock via my maternal grandmother, I like to make Eisbein (pork hocks) once every couple of years.

There are many recipes for this traditional German dish – called Schweinehaxe in Bavaria, BTW.  I’ve had them braised (which is how my family does it), roasted, and first boiled and then roasted.  If you roast them you’ll get a crispy skin, which yields a more visually-pleasing result, but I don’t care much about that.  I only care about what I want to have on that day – what kind of texture I crave.  Speaking of texture, Eisbein is not for everyone because you are dealing with lots of skin, fat and connective tissue.  Saturated fat content aside, if you never developed an affinity for these textures, then stay away.  If you are the kind of person who cuts every tiny piece of fat and gristle off a steak, stay away.  If your squeamishness is limited to wobbly skin, then find a good recipe that involves roasting.  On the flip-side, if you love Shanghai-style dishes that involve pork belly, you should like this dish, though it has a more limited flavor profile.  If you like oxtails, then no problem.

Family-style Eisbein

8 1-lb fresh pork hocks (these can come in sizes from small to humongous; clearly you’ll need to decide how many you need, but they make great leftovers, and I like to use a heavy-guage dutch oven, so I use enough hocks to prevent them from swimming in too much liquid )
1 gallon cold water (approximately – you need to cover the hocks to brine them)
3 T. kosher salt
1 t. black pepper
2 T. white vinegar
2 bay leaves
Water to cover

1)  Place the 1 gallon of water in a tall plastic container with 2 T. of the salt to create a brine; add hocks and cover
2)  Place in refrigerator and allow to brine overnight
3)  Drain hocks and place in dutch oven with remaining salt, pepper, vinegar and bay leaves
4)  Add water so that hocks are 4/5 covered
5)  Bring to boil and them simmer for about two hours – checking every now and then to see how they are doing, and to turn them over, if needed, without losing the skin, which may stick to the pot!  If you have 1-lb hocks, they should be done.  Pierce with a sharp knife; you’ll want them nice and tender but not mushy.  Large hocks will need to continue to simmer.
6)  Remove (carefully) with tongs and serve

Traditionally, this is served with boiled potatoes and sauerkraut*, but I had red cabbage on hand the day I made the ones in the photo, and this works well, too.

*Sauerkraut cannot be served right out of the can or jar!  If you want to make it the traditional way, then you need to rinse it well several times and cook it down with some peeled, grated potatoes.  Grate them right into the sauerkraut — you want the potato water, as well.  Use one average-sized potato for each quart of kraut and about a cup of water.  Cook it down until it’s a little gummy (which means the potatoes have cooked and released their starch).  Note that “real” sauerkraut is fermented using salt, and is the one German cooks still use.  Vinegar, used to quick-brine most commercially-produced sauerkraut in the US, results in an undesirable flavor and must be gotten rid of to the extent possible.

Final note:  If you wish to be frugal, mix unused cooking juices with a little white vinegar, pour into a plastic container over diced hock leftovers mixed with chopped pickles (you can even add some diced egg), via a cheese cloth-lined strainer, cool, cover and then place in fridge.  Next day, peel off the fat and you’ll have some nice headcheese.  This is why I don’t want an overabundance of cooking liquid, which would dilute the gelatin from the hocks.

When you’re German, it’s all about potatoes

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That’s right.  If you have potatoes, oil, salt, pepper, a pan and source of heat, you have  the makings of good eats.

Roast potatoes are a big part of my oeuvre.  They add comfort to a meal, and can serve as a complete meal when paired up with good bread, butter and preserves and maybe an egg.  They are great with creamed spinach, as well, and are fabulous served as a version of patatas bravas, in which case you need to make a good bravas sauce, such as the one in the Cesar cookbook.

Here’s all you have to do:

Roasted potatoes

1)  Wash and dry decent potatoes, like Yukon Gold, but, really, any kind will be OK.
2)  Cut into pieces as large as you like, but I usually make them no more than 1 1/2″ thick.
3)  Lay out in a single layer (with some breathing room) on a sheet pan.
4)  Add a liberal amount of salt (and some other spices, as you like, such as curry powder) to the top of the potatoes.  Don’t worry about distribution.
5)  Pour some canola oil on the potatoes.  Not too much, not too little.  You want a very thin layer on the bottom when all is said and done.
6)  Rub the whole mass together with your hands so that the taters are coated with oil, salt and spices and evenly distributed on the sheet pan.
7)  Bake at 400 deg. F., preferably with convection, until they start to brown.
8)  Turn the potatoes, prying them up carefully with a straight spatula and not allowing the browned parts to stick to the pan.
9)  Back in the oven until crispy outside and soft in the middle.
10)  Sprinkle with a little pepper

Enjoy!

Note that the photo here shows curry powder roast potatoes.

Curry roasted potatoes

Merry Christmas Eve 2008!

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berry the akita in front of a christmas tree in 2008

The most wonderful day of the year, Christmas Eve, and the weather outside was rainy, which is the best you can do in these parts.  Matthew, Mutti and I went to Nation’s to have a quick bite before going off to buy bread at Acme.  Acme was not an option, however, given the line of 50 people and rain nipping down smartly by that point.  We decided to buy slightly lame bread at Safeway, but even that was a drag given the traffic and lack of visibility.  Well, good sourdough bread is not something one can buy in advance, so what can you do but brave the obstacles?  Matt and Mutti came out of Safeway with an armful of Semifreddi’s baguettes, thank goodness, though we were hemmed into our parking spot for a good 15 minutes after being buckled in.  Once back home, we nested and tuned in to the yule log while waiting for Steven to come home from work so we could all watch Scrooge, the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, starring Alastair Sim, the finest movie version of the book, as far as I’m concerned, with most of the dialogue having been exported to the screenplay verbatim. 

Delice de Borgogne

Delice de Bourgogne

After the movie it was time to tuck into all the German goodies from Karl Ehmer and the various cheeses, like Delice de Bourgogne and Cambozola.  Finally – presents!  Steve scored The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion, by Martin Grams Jr. & Patrik Wikstrom, which really got a rise out of him.  He also got The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic, also by Grams (he obviously needs to get a life – like the rest of us obsessed with these shows).  Matt was happy with The Celluloid Closet DVD and the other gay-themed items he received.  My take included two books by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, the Istrian who started out working in Christopher Walken’s parents’ bakery in Astoria, Queens, before founding her cooking empire, and a mini-box set of Stax recordings.  Berry had a good night until I dressed him up as the Christmas dog.  For some reason this really pissed him off this year and he was so nasty I was forced to take off his bells.  I like the demonic look in his eyes in the photo above, so I didn’t do any correction.

Usinger’s Wurst

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Our Usinger’s Wurst order arrived today, so we had German pork products for dinner.  This is a place we always wanted to order from for Christmas, but thought better to first do a trial run to make sure things are up to cut.  Fred Usinger, Inc.  is located in Milwaukee – a pretty good meat city – though I have to say I was a bit disappointed.  As many of you know, I always make my base order from Karl Ehmer, and then add a few things from another butcher.  Ehmer’s offers free shipping, which saves you money even though the products are pricier.  Note that I paid an amount for shipping and handling equal to what I shelled out for actual products from Usinger’s, which is standard everywhere but Ehmer’s.  The reason I keep sniffing at the door of other companies is to find the perfect Leberwurst.  Karl Ehmer’s is good, but, like many brands, is too heavy on the cure and/or smoke for me.  After awhile I find this sickening.  I want to taste the liver, I want it to be moist, and I don’t want to taste TCM.  I also like it chunky, or grob.  Next, I am looking for the Grobe Mettwurst of my childhood – an almost spreadable, tangy, coarse, cured pork sausage product that might be lightly smoked, if at all.  Something like this may be had in the form of Grobe Teewurst, which is really a spread, from places like Schaller & Weber and Ehmer’s, but it’s not really the same thing.  Some meat packers even call Teewurst Mettwurst, which is an outrage.  Speaking of outrage, Karl Ehmer sells Canadian Bacon as Nuss Schinken! Madness.  Back to the illusive Mettwurst.  You have to know your stuff to find this, and you will only be able to come close, since it cannot be legally sold in the US in its original form, according to some of my German butcher friends.  In many cases, sausage close to Mettwurst is sold in the US as summer sausage, but there are so many varieties of the latter that trial and error is not a good way to go.  Call the meat packer and ask for one of the butchers from Germany and he’ll be able to steer you.  For example, the Schaller & Weber people told me that the closest they come to my fantasy is cervelat, which is pretty damned good.  Anyway, we ordered a small quality of each of six liverwursts, a smoked Mettwurst, and a few other things from Usinger’s.  Everything arrived well packed and frozen solid.  I was a little concerned about the frozen part.  Allow me to give you a rundown and review:

Tongue and blood:  Good.  Plenty of tongue.  The downside is the heavy smoke flavor.  They made a mistake and sliced it when we ordered a chunk.  Some in our party were not amused by this, since slicing destroys the texture.
Braunschweiger liverwurst:  Unremarkable.  Springy, perhaps from being frozen or not having enough fat.  It tore.  Not bad on the cure/smoke end of things, but not much flavor.
Milwaukee-style liverwurst:  Ditto.  Could not really tell the difference from the non-Milwaukee version.
Hessische liverwurst:  The only liverwurst  that was truly distinctive.  Pretty good, and heavily smoked, but it worked here.  More creamy than dry.
Old-fashioned liverwurst:  Not really chunky, though they said it would be.  Same review as the Braunschweigers.
Ring liverwurst:  My mother’s favorite, and a bit more flavorful and creamy.
Bavarian leberkaese:  This is a loaf made of pork puree that’s baked and then sliced thickly.  Good, but dense.  If you want it lighter get it from Ehmer’s or another butcher.
Topfsuelze:  No idea, as they sent head cheese by mistake, which is much sharper (more vinegar) and comes in a tube, as opposed to a square.  I was seriously pissed off about this.  When I called they said they’d send the right one out to me or provide a credit.  Nice people, but my nose was out of joint because this is my favorite thing in the whole world, and I didn’t get any.  Not all chopped pork jowl-area scrap meat in aspic is the same, after all.  The head cheese was tasty,  though, as it had plenty of tongue and other good bits, so it wasn’t a total loss.  Steven really liked it, partly because it cut through the heaviness of some of the other items.
Mettwurst, coarse, smoked:  Almost like kielbasa, so it did not work for me.  It’s hard to find the real deal because of the FDA regulations involving the sale of cured meat.
Beef, Farmer & Thueringer summer:  All fine.  The beef has some tang to it.  Texture is firm.  These are like salamis.

Bottom line is that Usinger’s products are good, but tailored to the American palate, in my opinion.  The liverwursts come across as less rich in taste and texture — more like top supermarket versions.  They are also less unique as individuals, whereas there is no question with Ehmer’s, Schaller & Weber, Koenemann’s and Stiglemeier that you know which one you are dealing from first bite, if not sight.  I like that the smoke and cure flavors are less pronounced in all cases but the Hessische – which is by nature heavily smoked – but not enough to pay for that kind of shipping, given other issues.  Berry liked all of it – even the head cheese, which he grabbed after I dropped a piece on the floor and it bounced away from me.  Even I have to admit this is kind of scary.